Chapter Text
When Regulus kisses him, it’s like being thirteen. Like going out to the barn to rake up old hay and checking around the corner for his Dad, his Mom, his sisters. Mom was still inside, of course, with baby Charlotte on her hip, eyes sticky from a night spent by her cradle. She cried so much Evan had ripped strips from one of his old t-shirts and shoved them in his ears before bed. He asked Dad to pick up earplugs at the store, but he kept forgetting, and by the fourth reminder, he’d snapped that Evan would be lucky if he ever picked them up at all, for how much of a nuisance he’d been.
So, it’s like being thirteen. Like using his early morning chores to creep over to the sawdust-smelling desk his Dad kept in the barn as an office. It had torn open envelopes, and scribbled reminders, and a skinny drawer right under the tabletop that always got caught on its way out. Long, rough scrapes were the only way to shimmy it open, and he wondered, sometimes, if his dad had cut the wood too big on purpose. A poor man’s alarm system. But during early morning chores, the roosters covered up the worst of it, and Evan saw his prize in the hard won crack: a porno mag.
It was too risky to do anything other than look at it in the barn, but God did he look. He looked, and looked, and memorized his favorite shots for later use, face screwed up and eyes squeezed shut to recall every inch of detail. He learned them by touch, too, ran a delicate finger over everything—spilling cleavage, open mouths, spread thighs. And sometimes, if he was really looking for trouble, he flipped to page thirty-two and stared at the cologne ad insert instead of the girls.
It was just a chest—the first few buttons undone, dark hair crawling towards a thick neck. That one, he never touched. But it made his heart slam against his chest anyway, made his palms sweaty, made him look over his shoulder every-second instead of every-other-second just in case Dad crept up on him in the act. Harmless, the same as the rest, but it put a tremor in his hands until he looked at the next set of boobs, and normal warmth spread back through his chest. Easy warmth.
Yeah, kissing Regulus is like that. Not the easy part. The part where his hands shake, and his heart races, and he thinks his Dad will burst through the door to give him a good smack upside the head.
“Oh, fuck you’re hot,” he says, and he thinks it might be more true than any compliment he’s ever given cause his skin feels so warm it’s gonna split. Like a hotdog left in the microwave too long, like a can of coca-cola slammed on the pavement. Regulus drags him down with two arms around his neck, and Evan thinks he gets sunburnt, or something. It hurts.
“Thanks,” Regulus says, with that smile caught in his mouth. The one that makes his face strange. A plain stone Evan picks up, turns over, only to find one of those little seashell fossils pressed into the underside. He puts it in his pocket. For safekeeping.
Regulus shimmies himself onto the bed, and Evan thinks he might have a heart attack at nineteen-years-old.
When Regulus had first shown up in the summer, he’d been all big eyes, and furrowed brows, and he’d kept wearing this pair of jean shorts that made him look like an off-duty camp counselor. He still looks like one some days, but after a few months Evan had noticed the rest. Noticed there was something strange about him. Bottled up. Like that coca-cola right before it hit the ground, like that hotdog just before the split. There’s a lot going on up there, and sometimes, Regulus even lets him see it.
Smiles, and laughs, and conversations about his weird family. Complaints, and preferred cereals, and best mile run times. Each one a little stone, each one stuck in his pockets, each one set on display somewhere he can remember: this guy trusts me. Evan’s always been a good friend, at least he likes to think so. There’s boys from high-school he still goes four-wheeler riding with when he visits home. A girl he had a fling with in middle-school who checks up on him every few months. His roommates in the soccer house had taken a liking to him quick enough.
But Regulus trusts in a way that makes him proud, makes him feel like he’s earned it. A worthwhile endeavor he wraps himself around. For safekeeping.
So this, Regulus shimmying back on his bed, Evan’s hand on his thigh, Regulus’s teeth on his lips—he knows almost no one gets this Regulus. No one earns this kind of trust. And he can’t untangle which part is better, that it’s his spit in Regulus’s mouth, or Regulus’s spit in his.
“The shirt’s good,” he says, and Regulus is looking up at him through those dark lashes, mouth red and cheeks splotchy. That stupid button-up undone like the ad-insert in a porno mag. He drags his hand up it. Finally he can touch, finally he forms the new sense-memory. Regulus has short, dark hair on his chest and Evan catalogues the prickle against his palm, the smooth skin on his neck, his kiss-swollen lip under the pad of his thumb. Yeah, he’s gonna have to remember this one later. “But I’d love to take it off you,” he says, and Regulus smiles at him. That same strange smile that makes him something to really look at.
He knows it means he got it wrong, cause who smiles like that if they’re turned on? He’s never had time, personally, so lost in that warm feeling that starts in his gut. And he has even less time now. His hands shake, and his heart races, and his Dad could walk in any minute. “C’mon, Reg, I’m trying to seduce you.”
The smile grows and blooms under his thumb. “Then use a better line.” Like a snap of elastic, the rush of a bruise under his skin. This kid is gonna kill him.
“Brutal,” he says, and Regulus keeps on smiling. When he leans back on his elbows and blinks up at him again, Evan considers dropping to his knees, begging maybe. Definitely begging. Instead, he crawls over him and rests his chin in the perfect spot for Regulus to keep looking at him through those heavy lids. Girls have never looked at him like this, like he’s just something to pass the time. An unimpressive hobby.
Regulus reaches for him, and he feels like one of those dogs that shakes when someone walks through the door. Regulus’s hand cards through his hair, and Evan goes stupid. When he tugs, a little too sharp, he whines. And Regulus laughs, a bright-eyed, mouth-curled, face-strange kind of laugh that turns the whine into a groan. Like fracturing a fantasy—back to sweet, trusting Regulus. Still so good, but so not what he’s going for right now.
“Please, Regulus,” he says, hands gripping Regulus’s hips. He’s got fingers on the skin at his waist. Fingers on his skin. Just that thought could make him pant if he focused on it long enough, “I’m desperate. Quit laughing.”
He bites on his smile, like he’s tucking it away in his own pocket instead, and Evan clambers towards him. Desperate, just like he said. He gets his mouth anywhere he can: that long neck, his cheek still creased from smiling, the corner of those lips that make that strange face. And Regulus lets him like he has been, like he keeps doing. Evan could swallow him whole, or—Regulus could swallow him. Something like that.
“It’s just weird seeing you like this,” Regulus says. He reaches for him again. A gentle hand on his chest that Evan matches with his own against his fluttering stomach. Another one of those things where it gets all tangled in his head. Which makes him harder? Regulus’s skin on him, or his skin on Regulus?
“I don’t think I’ve ever met someone worse at giving compliments,” Evan says.
A twitch at his mouth that Evan’s ready to chew off. “It wasn’t really supposed to be a compliment.”
He will chew it off. He has to. Or something like that. He leans down for it, and Regulus exhales hot against his mouth. God, if Regulus ever lets this go further he’s gonna embarrass himself. It really is like being thirteen.
“You know, I got that impression,” he says, and they’re kissing again. That’s embarrassing, too, the way it feels new every time. Reduces his lifespan by a few years, if that thing about only-so-many-heartbeats is true. Sweet, soft, camp counselor Regulus lets him shove hands under his slutty white button-up, and tugs him down so hard Evan can’t come up for air. It’s good. It’s so good. And there’s this moment, when Regulus lifts himself off the bed, and Evan wraps an arm around him, and they’re so close Evan thinks Regulus can feel the way he’s splitting down the middle cause he moans.
It’s the craziest thing he’s ever heard. Better than any video, or any girl, or any guy he’s fucked in his dreams. He feels like he should apologize, actually, for the dressing-down he’s giving them all in his head. They didn’t do anything wrong. Regulus is just something strange.
“You like that?” He asks, and he’s pretty sure his voice cracks, but there’s nothing for it. If Regulus keeps letting him, and reaching for him, he’s gonna figure out exactly how to get that sound over, and over, and—
Regulus laughs. A full-body laugh that he feels under his palms, and he has half a mind to put Regulus’s hands on his throat, tell him to put him out of his misery. But the thought makes him wanna drool. Maybe an image to revisit later, then, with the kiss swollen lips and the heavy eyes.
He drops his forehead to Regulus’s like he’s ready to swear fealty. “Oh my god,” he says, “you’re fucking annoying.”
“Who says that?” He asks, laughter spilling across Evan’s face. A dozen stones to shove away somewhere.
Evan groans. “Lots of people. It’s just—dirty talk, Reg.”
“I don’t know if you’re doing it right.”
Sweet, soft, camp counselor Regulus, talking to him like he has any clue what’s supposed to happen here. Maybe he does. Evan hasn’t asked much about that. “Dude,” he says, and Regulus puts a hand back in his hair to try and press them back together, like Evan needs any encouragement, but he won’t stop smiling. It’s giving him a toothache. “As much as it pains me to say it, that may be the end of the road for this session.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Regulus says, red lips pressed together to hide that span of just-off-center teeth. And just like that, he changes. From something that makes Evan wanna crawl on all fours to the strange kid who stood shivering in a lake four months ago, pale skin sickly under the sunlight.
Evan runs knuckles across his cheek to melt the strange pieces of him back together.